“In The Wall Street Journal, Arthur B. Laffer writes that Republicans should attach provisions repealing the worst aspects of ObamaCare and financial reform to spending that the president absolutely needs.”

Sadly, the land of Lincoln (my home state) has become the US equivalent of Greece in terms of its current fiscal situation! “As Illinois raised its corporate-tax rate to 7% from 4.8%, governors of some nearby states said they would woo the state’s businesses.”

Apparently money doesn’t grown on trees after all! “Two leading credit rating agencies cautioned the U.S. on its credit rating, expressing concern over a deteriorating fiscal situation that they say needs correction.”

“The world is resuming its trend toward more freedom, but those who fear the U.S. is falling behind the dynamic economies of Asia have cause for concern, Terry Miller writes in The Wall Street Journal.”

Unintended Consequences: This new NBER paper documents that high school students have responded, gaming the system by choosing high schools with lower performing peers as a way to get into the top 10%. The authors note, “The net effect of strategic behavior is to slightly decrease minority students’ representation in the pool.”

“In The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Paul A. Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia writes that vaccines don’t cause autism—and there was never any proof that they do. Too bad kids had to die while we figured that out.”

“In The Wall Street Journal, Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school system and the founder of StudentsFirst, writes that school systems can put students first by making sure any layoffs account for teacher quality, not seniority.”

“In The Wall Street Journal, John Steele Gordon offers a short history of heated political rhetoric in the U.S. He writes that Harry Truman would have had little patience for the notion that caustic political rhetoric causes murder—an argument pundits are currently making about the murders in Tucson.”

“Perhaps this year the event acquired a name that at last will stick. The World Financial Crisis? The Great Recession? Why not call it The Long Slump, said Robert Hall, of Stanford University, in his presidential address at the meeting here of the American Economic Association… This slump, which began in the autumn of 2007, is expected to last most of a decade… before the unemployment rate returns to its post-World War II trend.”

Is Groupon Good for Retailers? — HBS Working Knowledge

hbs.edu

“For retailers offering deals through the wildly popular online start-up Groupon, does the one-day publicity compensate for the deep hit to profit margins? A new working paper, To Groupon or Not to Groupon, sets out to help small businesses decide.”

“It’s up to free markets and the private sector to bail us out of the mess The spirit of capitalism, supposedly killed off in the wake of the financial crisis, is sweeping the world’s economies. From Obama’s new White House to the Las Vegas computer show to the international auto industry and beyond, business is making a comeback and the essence of free markets — competition — is ripping through the global economic system.”